That's not really a fair assessment of CDs. There were lots of advantages: + CD audio (this advantage cannot be overstated given the limitations of sound chips

That's not really a fair assessment of CDs. There were lots of advantages: + CD audio (this advantage cannot be overstated given the limitations of sound chips of that era + higher storage (cartridges were very limiting. It's why Sonic 3 was originally split over two carts (Sonic 3 + Sonic & Knuckles) + Cheaper to produce The issue wasn't that the world wasn't ready for CD-based consoles. The issue was that it was effectively buying a whole new console as an addon to an existing console. In fact the Sega CD had it's own RAM, CPU and graphics processor too. I cannot blame families for not buying the Sega CD because why would you when you already had the Mega Drive? So the issue wasn't a lack of technical capabilities. It was just that it was an expense too many for most people. As an aside, I do have a Mega CD (PAL) and a bunch of games hooked up in my games room. It's a great system. I love it. However I got it when it was cheap retro hardware (before the 16bit retro market exploded). I love collecting hardware and even I wouldn't have paid release prices for it at the time.